Negociaciones: René Marqués y el proyecto pedagógico-cultural de estado muñocista

Abstract

In 1948, when Luis Muñoz Marín became Puerto Rico's first elected governor, the island entered a period in which key institutions and foundational discourses were created. Although the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, founded in 1955, may have been the first government agency formally charged with defining "Puerto Rican culture," the División de Educación de la Comunidad (DivEdCo) had begun to promote a normative vision of puertorriqueñidad, through art and writing, seven years earlier. This relatively autonomous branch of the Departmento de Instrucción Pública provided Puerto Rican intellectuals with the space to create art "for the people" which turned out to be not only of didactic value: DivEdCo spurred the development of modern Puerto Rican cinema and graphic arts, and was the meeting place for several writers of the so-called promoción del 40, foremost among whom was René Marqués. This article shows Marqués' double role as head of DivEdCo's editorial section, and "intellectual leader" of his contemporaries.